Optical fiber can be used as a medium for telecommunication and networking because it is flexible and can be bundled as cables. It is especially advantageous for long-distance communications because light propagates through the fiber with little attenuation compared with electrical cables. In recent times, vast fiber optic networks have been commissioned to cope with the increasing growth in Internet communication and cable television.
In one existing example, fiber optic networks are designed manually with a view of ensuring that engineering and other physical requirements are met. Not only is this manual design process often laborious and time consuming, but the resulting network design is often far from ideal by including more infrastructure than is absolutely necessary, which ultimately adds to network cost. In addition, manually modifying the designed network to reduce the amount of infrastructure, or in response to changing requirements, is also a laborious and time consuming task.
WO 2012/021933 discloses a system for designing a fiber optic network in an area that has existing infrastructure. The system generates a design by optimizing geographic locations of the nodes and arcs in the fiber optic network using design inputs and existing infrastructure, and outputs a design comprising the optimised geographic locations of the nodes and arcs relative to the existing infrastructure.